Microsoft Xbox 360’s Red Ring of Death Looks To Be On the Decline Thankfully

A few weeks back, we told you that Microsoft's Xbox 360 was seeing some really bad numbers, regarding return rates and that enfuriating Red Ring of Dead (RRoD) problem. Fear not though, as it looks like we're starting to see some definite improvement on that latter part, at least according to the largest independent warranty provider in America. We don't know about you, but we're always excited when technology stops breaking, especially when it's something like the Xbox 360.

SquareTrade has analyzed over 16,000 new consoles, a random choice between the three systems, covered by the company over the last two years. Broken down, there was a total of 2,500 Xbox 360s, 2,500 PS3s, and 11,000 Wiis chosen for the study. In the results, it includes all major hardware issues that plague the systems. The biggest results for the Xbox 360, is that since the inclusion of the Jasper chipset, which is smaller and runs cooler, the Xbox 360 has seen less and less failure rates, especially concerning the RRoD. They go on to say that looking at over 500 Xbox 360 units purchased in 2009, fewer than 1% of customers have reported a RRoD error as of August 2009.

On not such a good note, the Xbox 360 is apparently the most unreliable console after two years of usage. According to SquareTrade, the Xbox 360 was struck with a failure rate of 23.7%, while the PS3 was at a minimal 10%, and the Wii was at a ridiculous (in a good way) 2.7%. Furthermore, SquareTrade states that for many customers of Microsoft's console, they are reporting the RRoD failure directly to Microsoft, and therefore this could alter their data. The failure rate could be as high as 35%. The full report can be found "here".